Thursday, 14 November 2013

Historian Mark Almond on how and why European
Muslims are going to Syria to become battle hardened jihadists and on how
certain groups funded by European governments have themselves forwarded
Islamists 'along a pipeline' to Syria to fight against
Assad.

There is an element of collusion between the government in
Britain and jihadists dating back to the 1980s in Afghanistan designed
to further geopolitical and oil and gas interests, one that has and can
and will lead to violent 'blowback' in the form of domestic terror
attacks.

Wednesday, 13 November 2013

A very good summary of Syria's geopolitical significance was written by Michael T Klare for The Nation in September.

'Although Syria is not itself a significant oil producer, it lies
adjacent to many of the major suppliers and has long served as a host
for pipelines connecting the Gulf to the Mediterranean. More
importantly, in recent years, is has assumed strategic importance as an
ally of Iran and a conduit for Iranian arms shipments to Hezbollah in
Lebanon. “Syria has a geopolitical importance out of all proportion to
its relatively small population, area, resource base, and economic
wealth because of formidable military power…and its location at the
heart of the Middle East,” Alasdair Drysdale of the Australian National
University wrote in the Oxford Companion to World Politics. “As a result, it plays a central role in most of the Middle East’s key disputes.”

This is the dilemma facing Obama today. If the United States cannot
extricate himself from the geopolitical imperatives posed by Iran’s
continuing threat to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the safety of Persian
Gulf oil supplies, it cannot extricate itself from the turmoil in Syria.
Because a failure to confront Assad’s excesses could be viewed as
giving Iran and other outside powers a green light to meddle in the
Syrian conflict, and could be seen by the Iranians as an indication that
they can continue to stockpile enriched uranium with impunity, US
leaders see no choice but to become involved in Syria.

Russian involvement in the Syrian imbroglio adds another dimension to
America’s dilemma. Russia has long-established ties with the Syrian
leadership, beginning with Assad’s predecessor, his father Hafiz, and
retains a vital naval base at Tartous, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.
More important than these strategic interests, however, is Moscow’s
desire to curb America’s global activism. From Russia’s perspective,
then, Syria is less important as a strategic asset in itself than as an
arena in which to gain geopolitical advantage over the West. By the same
token, a failure to contest Russia’s spoiler in Syria role could be
interpreted as an invitation for Moscow to undertake other
obstructionist endeavors'.

Back in September military action by the US and France over the alleged chemical weapons attack by Assad's forces on a suburb of Damascus seemed inevitable. Dossiers were being produced and ministers were waxing indignant about the need to 'punish' Assad.

The reason why the US and France were drawn to the brink of intervening with missile strikes and aircraft carriers had been sent to the Eastern Mediterranean was the dangerous New Great Game over gas resources and pipeline routes, one that explains Western double standards over Syria and Egypt.

After the Egyptian army had mown down protesters and their barricades with bullets and bulldozers in the streets of Cairo who were against the military coup, Western diplomats made weasel comments about the need for dialogue. When Assad was alleged to have used poison gas in Syria, the call was to remove him.

From the US perspective, there was far less to gain in intervening to try and put pressure on Assad than certain EU powers such as Britain and France. The US felt it needed to act because it was tied to the rhetoric about Assad's use of chemical weapons being a 'red line' that once, when crossed, necessitated action.

All three external powers backing and funding the insurgents against Assad decided to do so in order to get a new regime that would not oppose their energy interests, in particular the plan to build more gas pipelines to EU states, to export Qatari liquefied natural gas ( LNG ) and reduce dependence on Iran and Russia.

Energy geopolitics is a prime determiner of the relations between states in the early twenty first century as the race is on to control supplies that are not keeping pace with the burgeoning demand. States haunted by the prospect of their decline such as Britain and France have been the most aggressive in struggling to retain influence.

Part of this is post-imperial hubris but that ties together with both these states role as large arms providers to Middle Eastern states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The BG group has major interests in exploiting Egyptian gas reserves ( hence the mealy mouthed denunciations of SCAF for their bloody coup d' etat ).

The problem with Syria, from France and Britain's perspective, is that he occupies a piece of strategic land through which Iran wants to extend its energy interests no less than Russia which has leased a naval port in Tarsous through which it can protect its energy interests in the Levant with new discoveries of undersea gas.

Despite the immediate crisis having diminished since September 2013, the longer term potential for intractable conflict remains. More than that, there is evidence that radicalised Muslims are going to and fro from Western nations to Syria to become hardened jihadists and who might carry out attacks there.

There is evidence that the secret services have been prepared to use these jihadists as 'assets' in the past from Afghanistan, to Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Kosovo in order to further energy interests. The prospect of 'blowback' being visited upon Britain and France is a lethal consequence of this New Great Game.

"After
the long and painful campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, I understand
every impulse to stay clear of the turmoil, to watch but not to
intervene, to ratchet up language but not to engage in the hard, even
harsh business of changing reality on the ground"

It's
surprising that few commentators deal with the issue of whether
Blair has a bad conscience or not ( as opposed to seeing him as a bare faced liar ). His attitude to the bloodshed
unleashed by the Iraq invasion is to argue for the lowest estimate of
deaths-around 100,000-and to try and persuade readers of A Journey how he agonised over the decision.

Yet politicians
such as Blair no longer have careers. They have journeys in which
they encourage the true believers to follow them through adversity and
towards the ultimate triumph of what is just and right, with
casualties on the way alas. Despite affecting to be a Christian, this attitude has more in common with twentieth century Utopian communists.

It's all retrospective pleading. At
the time in 2003, Blair was supremely confident. He has rationalised the
hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq by spinning it that the sort of
interventions about to be undertaken against the 'Assad regime' in
Syria show the need to stand tough against evil dictators.

One of
the propaganda mechanisms inherent in the attempt to create an
acceptable 'public doctrine' is to create fake binary choices, a
simplistic framing device of the 'either-or' pose. All possible
objections are reduced to an absurd muddleheaded reaction whereas his own 'resolve'
rings clear, bright and true by comparison.

"in any event, why take sides since
they're all as bad as each other? It is time we took a side: the side
of the people who want what we want; who see our societies for all their
faults as something to admire; who know that they should not be faced
with a choice between tyranny and theocracy".

The
fact that this 'analysis' bears no resemblance to the actual nature of
the choices facing Syria is irrelevant. Blair is striding out to do what
his job always was; to try to convince himself the better to convince
the public that the 'choice' is as he only sees it ( even if you may politely
'disagree' with him ).

And this is what a Peace Envoy in the
Middle East is there to do. The only peace Blair understands is
pacifying the conscience before contemplating the large scale military
actions he knows will create more deaths in the short term because they
will die in order that future generations will live and learn to live better.

And so
'History' will absolve him or, at least he hopes, his actions in Iraq
will be understood and 'contextualised'. Though the 'something must be
done' pose from Blair is all to do with this, his professions about
the path to peace, through just wars, are the effusions of the worst
sort of sinister Creeping Jesus politician.

It seems incredible that so many were taken in by this fraud during his time in office and still seem to regard his "analysis" of the Middle East as providing "insight". It does but not in the way his craven and fawning admirers suppose.

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About the Blog

This blog is mostly about the New Great Game for resources across the globe, the impact of oil and gas dependency upon both Britain and the oil rich nations, the purported interconnections between foreign policy and terrorism, the growth of Islamism and the mendacious nature of much 'Public Diplomacy'. It also seeks to anticipate the forthcoming threats to world peace by discerning the true nature of the new emerging psychopathologies that come with the struggle over diminishing natural resources, global warming, proxy conflicts and the prospect of civilisational collapse in regions such as the Middle East, Central Africa and the Maghreb.